A/68/297 investigate and punish violations of international humanitarian law. 97 Clear policies and codes of conduct should be in place within the military, police force, and medical institutions to protect the right to health in conflict. 98 A. Monitoring and transparency 62. Violations of the right to health in conflict, including attacks on, and interference with, the delivery of health care, are often not fully captured in current monitoring systems. 99 Monitoring of such violations in conflict and post-conflict situations is often poor or incomplete, due to insecurity and lack of systematic data collection and dissemination by States and international organizations. 100 Monitoring mechanisms may focus excessively on high-profile issues such as attacks on international aid workers rather than more common violations such as threats against local workers or damage to underlying determinants. 101 The practice of retaliating against whistleblowers may also mean that health-care workers and affected populations, who are in the best position to report violations of the right to health, may be reluctant to do so for fear of being unable to provide or access medical care. 63. Security concerns should not be used to justify blanket bans on reporting violations, particularly where a less restrictive means of ensuring security is available, such as allowing anonymous reporting of incidents. 102 States should ensure that accurate information is available to independent monitors and should not retaliate against persons who report violations. States should also prevent and investigate threats and attacks against such persons by both State agents and third parties. States should especially promote community-based monitoring initiatives, which ensure that the views of the local population are taken into account, and provide transparent and reliable information to civil society and affected communities. 64. Lack of transparency and accountability in health programming and governance in conflict also undermines confidence between affected populations and States, impeding attempts to better provide and protect health services in conflict-affected areas and preventing accurate assessments of aid allocation. This can increase the risk of further violations and the difficulty of remedying them. In particular, lack of transparency and accountability discourages aid to conflict areas, depriving devastated health systems of much-needed funding. Conflict-affected countries receive 43 per cent less aid than countries with similar development needs, __________________ 97 98 99 100 101 102 13-42297 See sources cited in Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck, Customary International Humanitarian Law, vol. I, Rules (Cambridge, United Kingdom, ICRC and Cambridge University Press, 2005), rule 158. Available from www.icrc.org. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 14 (2000), paras. 55-56, 59. Leonard Rubenstein, “Protection of health care in armed and civil conflict: opportunities for breakthroughs” (Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2012), pp. 2-4. Available from http://csis.org/files/publication/120125_Rubenstein_ProtectionOfHealth_Web.pdf. Ibid., p. 2. ICRC, “Health care in danger: violent incidents affecting health care: January to December 2012” (Geneva, 2013), p. 5. P. J. Jennings and S. Swiss, “Supporting local efforts to document human rights violations in armed conflict”, Lancet, vol. 357, No. 9252 (January 2001), p. 302. 21/24